Annette Sharp: John Barilaro’s partner was not planning to move to New York with him
It seems John Barilaro’s plans for a brilliant new life in New York did not include the woman he moved on with following the breakdown of his 26-year marriage, writes Annette Sharp.
NSW
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It seems John Barilaro’s plans for a brilliant new life in New York did not include the woman he moved on with following the breakdown of his 26-year marriage.
Barilaro’s girlfriend and former staffer Jennifer Lugsdin has told friends she would not have relocated to New York with Barilaro, had he realised his dream of becoming the US trade commissioner.
The mother of two, whose own marriage, like Barilaro’s, ended last year, was not prepared to move away from her two adolescent children who are secure in their northern beaches schools, though are still coming to terms with their parents’ separation.
An under-pressure Barilaro has since relinquished the trade commissioner post after his appointment became the subject of an upper house inquiry.
“Jennifer would never have left her children and she was never going to uproot them and move them to the US and away from their father,” said one close source during the week.
It seems Barilaro and Lugsdin were planning to continue their relationship long distance, although sources last week suggested that despite the former NSW Nationals leader and deputy premier being amply able to afford trips home on his new $500,000-a-year-salary, it may not have survived.
News of the US appointment can hardly have thrilled his ex-wife Deanna either, given the couple have three daughters together, the youngest of whom, Sofia, is only six and adores her father.
Elder daughters, Domenica and Alessia, are both in their twenties and while they initially struggled with their parents’ separation, one imagines they’d have relished the opportunity to visit their father at his proposed $1.3 million New York office and crashing in the spare room of his undoubtedly chic Big Apple pad. Lugsdin’s career movements during the past year — the year in which the New York trade role was controversially created, filled, rescinded and refilled — have also seen a number of changes.
After working for Barilaro as his senior media adviser for two years from 2019 until August 2021, that same month Lugsdin joined NSW government agency Investment NSW.
As the New York trade commissioner position was being readvertised in December after an earlier offer to Jenny West was withdrawn, Barilaro’s girlfriend was finishing up with Investment NSW and moving to a new role within another government department, the NSW Department of Communities and Justice.
Lugsdin is, of course, not the only person to be transferred within government departments.
In 2020 this column revealed the relationship between Liberal minister Geoffrey Lee, then NSW Skills and Tertiary Education boss, and his media adviser Carmel Melouney.
As news of the relationship and the couple’s pregnancy broke, Melouney was redeployed to the NSW Department of Education as associate director of media to minister Sarah Mitchell.
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